I'm ambivalent, at best, about the 31 Flavors of Windows. But it raises an interesting point...
Old computers that still kick A55 and would be a shame to throw out. I have a PIII-400 that stills does what it needs to, and a Mac 8500 that still does nearly everything I ask, except that IE Mac doesn't work on most sites. What we need to do, sometime <BLINK>REALLY SOON</BLINK> is to freeze a subset of computers and OS forever into an R2-Unit standard.
Recall that the R2 unit loaded into Luke's X-wing was the SAME unit that Obi-Wan used. How likely is it that ANYTHING we have on a computer now will even physically plug in, let alone work in 40 years. Some computers can do 90% of what we need from now until at least 20 years from now. Can we PLEASE pick a set of standards and let that class of computer be supported? For example, ATA-100, USB 2.0 (or Firewire800, I don't care), DVI, RJ-45... I have peripherals in my garage with no computer capable of connecting them. I still have a copy of X-Wing vs. Tie Fighter... as if. Something. Anything.
And Windows Whatever. XP, XT, 2KSP17. I don't care.
That way, as we retire, the Geek Squad can say, "Do you want us to replace your computer? This one's seen a lot of wear." "Not on your life. That G4 Titanum and me have been through a lot together."
I have. Those cool doldrum shaped things make it curve left (thrown right handed). Effective range is only about 5 meters. Less if you have to get it through a cubicle 'doorway'.
The problem with YOUR problem with MY argument is that many states, including my own, have a large population center AND a large rural area. There are many such. CA, TX, FL, MI. Now, it's not that Richmond and Atlanta are ruled by NY, Philly and Boston, but that The Lower Peninsula of Michigan is ruled by Detroit.
My complaint is not that however Detroit votes rules Michigan, or SFO/LAX rule CA. It's not even that how NY votes rules The South, because that has all changed. You might recall that we've added some states since the Electoral College was formed. Their popular vote tends to lean against NY/Philly. And if that is how the popular votes ends up? WELCOME TO AMERICA! But my complaint is that the last 12 voters, three hanging chads and a Secretary of State in FL rules us all.
Is it not ironic that the system which tried to prevent NY from ruling the South caused a southern state, FL, to rule the election by 537 votes, plus the whim of the Governor. That's 538, which HAPPENS TO BE the number of votes in the Electoral College. That's 0.000509% (yes %) Is there any computer system that is that precise? Any system that accurate?
Lose the Electoral College, let every vote count. Let "tolerance" begin with the precision of the voting system.
While in principal I agree that every vote counts, and every vote is sacred... [deep breath] An election is a system. It is a machine. It has to have SOME fault-tolerance.
But when one vote can swing one state can swing one electoral bloc can swing one election can swing one world climate/political landscape/economy... THAT is a BSOD waiting to happen. With the ability to count 99.994% of the votes instantly, the need for the Electoral College is obviated. Instead of using a fault-ridden system (Imagine if the voting system was as buggy as WinME:-)) to administer a fault-critical system... Let's fix the fault-critical system.
LOSE THE ELECTORAL COLLEGE!!!
Then, if one precinct gets utterly lost or corrupted, then it dings the POPULAR vote tallies. The same person wins the election AND gets inaugurated. The only people who REALLY are affected by a tolerable tolerance of fault will be the Bookies in Vegas who handle the point spreads.
The Electoral College was a necessity in it's day when bandwidth was REALLY REALLY low. We may need it again, when votes within the United States of the Virgo Cluster are counted... but till then, abolish the Electoral College, even though it takes a Constitutional Amendment. We need to do this while we still have a Constitution to amend.
"A distribution of 2 Billion sticks of TNT will do more damage than a 1MT device."
I wish that I could have an array of small monitors, specifically tasked. I'd like to have a chat client maximized in a 512x384 screen, so I don't have to do anything to read "LOL". I'd like to have my Perl scripts running in their own screen, instead of having a DOS window pop up in front of me every 5 minutes.
I wanted to make a Mac SE/30 serve as a second monitor, for starters. But chickened out. Maybe even crack an iPod screen as a mini-monitor... stuck on the side of my 20" like a stickie note. I can buy a 640x480 digital picture frame... Can I make it into a monitor? Even an array of cellphone screen, tiled. I don't need 1024x768 to see the radar from the weather channel. But I do want to see the storm sneaking up on me out of the corner of my eye.
Oh, and how about a cellphone screen to output a 320x160 webcam;-)
Worse than a pro-Apple buzz, is the Anti-Microsoft Buzz. As another Switcher appears at the watercooler, smiling like Smilin' Bob, the DIS-satisfaction of Microsoft will grow. What will happen is that Windows users will become increasingly frustrated with their inabilities, the road blocks, the busted drivers, the paths out into the 'Net they now FEAR to tread. Every "Cancel or Allow" will toll in an image of the Apple commercial's sunglassed security monger. The "Sad Realization" will grow.
Like one who looked into the Palantir, the emotional illness will sink in. And they will be trapped. Every mouse click will make them sicker, sink them deeper. Their happy, released Mac User associates will shine like a white wizard among the Orcs.
And every trick that Microsoft will try to rejuvenate their relationship will be transparent to them. Zune the iTune killer will make them laugh sadly. Every promise of liberation and innovation will fall flat before it is delivered. Every
The numbers will lie, like the percentage of marriages that last longer than 7 years... it belies the number of dead marriages still lingering. Microsoft will retain 90%+ of the market, but those will be wretched zombies, entombed in their own fear and loathing.
Microsoft's "WOW" will become "woe", from which they are unable to escape. And like Gandalf, betrayed by a friend and mentor, they are marooned atop a tower which promised great vision, but a broad horizon of darkness, gloom and malevolence is their only vista.
WWGLD? "What Lucas did" was introduce the "Place this explosive somewhere and fix the problem" He didn't invent it, but it's hard to sell a script that requires a LONG TERM SOLUTION. How many such movies ended up with that mindset?
Return of the Jedi (Fool me twice...)
Solar Crisis
The Core
Deep Impact/Armageddon
Independence Day
Ad nauseum
I'm surprised that "The Day After Tomorrow" didn't have Dennis Quaid trying to set off a runaway reactor to counteract the temperature plunge. But that's "form following function". You have to get to climax in less than two hours. Shut up and watch the movie...
However... this mentality is seeping into solving long term real-life problems. Asteroid impact, global warming, overpopulation, urban sprawl, concentration of food production (eggs) into one basket.
When a movie-goer sees these problems in their real life, they think that "there is no problem which cannot be solved by judicious application of high explosives." But it's quite the opposite.
Has anyone considered if [Apple adopting Intel] is *** INTEL's *** way of diversifying, as an "off world colony of Planet Wintel"? In other words, is this a backup location in the seemingly increasingly likely implosion of the 'Win Wing" of WinTel? Nothing is "unthinkable", merely improbable.
Blustery pundits have used the phrase "national security risk" when referring to Windows. What if it were outlawed in government facilities? I have worked with LARGE corporations that 'forbade' IE on the computers. What if something unthinkable, as unthinkable as an asteroid strike is on Planet Earth, happened to Windows?
---
Don't put all yer x86's in one basket
------
And myself in 1998
The day will come when WinPlanet implodes. It happened to IBM. Hell, it happened to Apple. On that day, you will ask the reflection in your blank monitor the question, "Where do you want to go today?" [made with Mac logo]
So much so, that for millennia, Rabbi's had to answer the same question that Clarence Darrow (or at least Henry Fonda's portrayal) asked: "If God created the Sun on the third day, how did you know when to count the first and second day?" I'm sure a few scientists-to-be-stuck-in-a-religious-context asked... "Rabbi. if God created the Sun, Moon and stars, on the third day, what was the "light and the dark" from the first day?
I mentioned that one day to a colleague. He said "Oh, that's the division of dark matter from light." This was not a "religious person." This was a card-carrying subscriber to Skeptics Journal. I once remarked that he might be the "most skeptical person I know". He answered, "Oh, I doubt that." If a skeptic can see it, why
Before the Big Bang was hypothesized, the "Let there be light" didn't make sense. Now, it does. Science gives us a framework to envision it. My point is that until dark matter was hypothesized, the old Rabbinical interpretations didn't work. They didn't even make sense in their own context. Now, it works. Genesis presents a (terse) description and sequence of events and science confirms with observations? Isn't that how science works? That is FAR less "wishful thinking" than "the universe spontaneously popped into existence from nothing" and "It expanded in a million trillion trillionths of a second."
Genesis is a VERY condensed version of the first 13ish billion years. If you took what we currently know and condense it to the same length, then use words than uneducated slaves could understand, it would look remarkably the same.
Here is my own paraphrase of Genesis I...
There was no earth, there was nothing. No light, only Chaos. Some energy we don't understand acted upon the Chaos. Poof! Something! Energy! Cool! The energy divided into light energy and "dark energy"... earth got water, had one land mass.
The Chaos is that bubbling pot that Hawking mentioned. Something popped out of it, it resembled photonic energy, gelled into light and Dark energy. Mass... the earth cooled, Pangaea was THE land mass. Which part of that does NOT resemble a very terse description of our current scientific understanding?
We "religious scientists" are amused that in the last decade, "Dark energy" has become en vogue, and Genesis covered it 3600 years ago. Savvy?
One of the reasons that there is even anything being discussed here is that Genesis very strongly resembles current cosmological theory and mindset. If "religious writings", which in this case are inferred the Book of Genesis of the Judeo-Christian Bible, bore absolutely no resemblance to scientific evidence, then this post would not have been made. Or necessary.
But it does!
The problem is that an 3000+ year-old book which could be subtitled "A WAY WAY Briefer History of Time" still looks like Hawkings theories is what keeps this reparteé alive, feeds the faith of the "religious scientists" and irritates the crap out of the "non-religious scientists".
Pretend this is real... Solidified hydrogen. I'm imagining a solid rocket motor. I'm imagining the "specific impulse" (thrust per unit mass) of such a system. I'm imagining the materials it would take to contain it.
I'm imagining the blast radius of the first couple test failures.
How many songs are there that are on multiple "albums"? How often do record companies put out a "Greatest Hits" compilation and add a new song just to get the fans of that band to "need" to buy it?
Now, they don't need to. The iTuner gets the new "<fiction>Van HalenRunning With The Devil f. Alanis Morrisette on vocals</fiction>" for a buck, instead of shelling out $17.99 for that and 17 reruns. That's a 94.4% drop in revenue, and DRM has nothing to do with it.
"The OS" also provides the engine for the menus, dialogs. Think of it this way... look at Word for Windows and Word for Mac. They essentially "do" the same thing. But every way in which they "look" or "behave" differently is from the OS. The Application just calls it.
As both a Mac and a Windows user ("If there's a steady paycheck in it, I'll believe anything you say."), I am amused that OSX wins. I say this because MacOS 9 had features that makes OSX feel stodgy. I could open an item halfway down a submenu with a graceful -x^3 shaped swoop. I could drag a file off the desktop into "pop up tabbed window", have it pop up and drop the file into an icon. I could double click on the titlebar, and have the window "windowshade" into the title bar. WITHOUT MOVING MY MOUSE, I could repeat and get the window back. Spring Loaded Folders, where I drag a file onto a folder, wait, the folder opens, repeat, drop and they all close. I could drag a link off the page and get the SUBSTANCE of the link. If I drag a link to a JPG, I get teh actual JPG.
Windows Vista isn't 6 years behind the UI curve, it's about 10, counting what it STILL hasn't stolen from Copland/MacOS8.
=-=-=-=-=- User interface is everything
RJ List, a windows developer who openly admitted he couldn't design the interface.
PS: Window's Maximize works better than that voodoo that Mac do on the green ball. I'll give them that.
Insignia's SoftWindows95 on PowerMacintosh 6100/66 WITHOUT the DOS Compatibility.
I know this is a degenerate case, because I didn't really have to do anything except install it and watch Windows draw every... single... line that we later called a "button". But my kid could make a pixel car in MSPaint faster than the "freeze/reboot cycle" of mom's Windows ME.
And in MS-DOS mode, it still runs the best word processor of all time... WordPerfect 5.0 (From back in the day when a "blue screen" was a good thing.)
No menu, no mouse. We actually got things done. "We don't need no stinking menus!"
Part of the "What else is there?" is on the heads of developers. Many places of business use applications that were only written for Windows, and they are necessary for their business. I cite "Xactimate" for insurance estimation. It's not the OS that locks them in, it's the applications that don't exist on another platform.
And I am as guilty as anyone. As a Mac User, I have not written ONE LINE of Mac Code. I have REAL Basic on my machine, but have I used it? No...
We as a developer community need to do one of three things:
I would reply "Define evil." I will try to and I will be brief.
Steve Jobs: "Perception is reality."
Bill Gates: "MY Perception is reality."
The difference between an evil Apple and an evil Microsoft is that Apple users might believe that 2 + 2 = 5, but Microsoft users are told that 2 + 2 = 5 until the just "allow it" to be.
This was not an actual job posting, but typical of many. My gripe was twofold.
That job posters added criteria they didn't need, just to attract more prospects. That is nothing but clutter on a radar, not helping anyone find the right job.
That most of the great programmers I know can't DESIGN or do the graphics, let alone have the time to put together a good Flash
Ok, three-fold. This very wide pyramid of skills is what it would take to be a "webmaster". However, since they also have to eat, breathe and defecate, there aren't enough hours to do all of these things AND learn new skills. Yes, I noticed as I was writing the original reply that others said the same thing in one word "Specialization". But to quote Heinlein, "Specialization is for insects". The small companies I worked for, and later that I contracted to couldn't afford an admin, AND a programmer, AND a Graphics/Flash person. They only got one person who was... AND... AND...
The $36k WAS a real job posting for.NET, DB and Flash. For that little money, I'd rather drive a truck.
Slashdot Mirror
I'm ambivalent, at best, about the 31 Flavors of Windows. But it raises an interesting point...
Old computers that still kick A55 and would be a shame to throw out. I have a PIII-400 that stills does what it needs to, and a Mac 8500 that still does nearly everything I ask, except that IE Mac doesn't work on most sites. What we need to do, sometime <BLINK>REALLY SOON</BLINK> is to freeze a subset of computers and OS forever into an R2-Unit standard.
Recall that the R2 unit loaded into Luke's X-wing was the SAME unit that Obi-Wan used. How likely is it that ANYTHING we have on a computer now will even physically plug in, let alone work in 40 years. Some computers can do 90% of what we need from now until at least 20 years from now. Can we PLEASE pick a set of standards and let that class of computer be supported? For example, ATA-100, USB 2.0 (or Firewire800, I don't care), DVI, RJ-45... I have peripherals in my garage with no computer capable of connecting them. I still have a copy of X-Wing vs. Tie Fighter... as if. Something. Anything.
And Windows Whatever. XP, XT, 2KSP17. I don't care. That way, as we retire, the Geek Squad can say, "Do you want us to replace your computer? This one's seen a lot of wear." "Not on your life. That G4 Titanum and me have been through a lot together."
PS: The blink tag was fake.
I have. Those cool doldrum shaped things make it curve left (thrown right handed). Effective range is only about 5 meters. Less if you have to get it through a cubicle 'doorway'.
When your LANparty opponents frags you for the 7th time in a row, you'll THROW your laptop at him/her/it.
"Check the facts, do the math"
http://www.fec.gov/pubrec/fe2000/2000presge.htm
CA, FL, NY add up to about 24 Million of the 100+ million votes. Bring it on!
The problem with YOUR problem with MY argument is that many states, including my own, have a large population center AND a large rural area. There are many such. CA, TX, FL, MI. Now, it's not that Richmond and Atlanta are ruled by NY, Philly and Boston, but that The Lower Peninsula of Michigan is ruled by Detroit. My complaint is not that however Detroit votes rules Michigan, or SFO/LAX rule CA. It's not even that how NY votes rules The South, because that has all changed. You might recall that we've added some states since the Electoral College was formed. Their popular vote tends to lean against NY/Philly. And if that is how the popular votes ends up? WELCOME TO AMERICA! But my complaint is that the last 12 voters, three hanging chads and a Secretary of State in FL rules us all.
Is it not ironic that the system which tried to prevent NY from ruling the South caused a southern state, FL, to rule the election by 537 votes, plus the whim of the Governor. That's 538, which HAPPENS TO BE the number of votes in the Electoral College. That's 0.000509% (yes %) Is there any computer system that is that precise? Any system that accurate?
Lose the Electoral College, let every vote count. Let "tolerance" begin with the precision of the voting system.
While in principal I agree that every vote counts, and every vote is sacred... [deep breath] An election is a system. It is a machine. It has to have SOME fault-tolerance.
:-)) to administer a fault-critical system... Let's fix the fault-critical system.
But when one vote can swing one state can swing one electoral bloc can swing one election can swing one world climate/political landscape/economy... THAT is a BSOD waiting to happen. With the ability to count 99.994% of the votes instantly, the need for the Electoral College is obviated. Instead of using a fault-ridden system (Imagine if the voting system was as buggy as WinME
LOSE THE ELECTORAL COLLEGE!!!
Then, if one precinct gets utterly lost or corrupted, then it dings the POPULAR vote tallies. The same person wins the election AND gets inaugurated. The only people who REALLY are affected by a tolerable tolerance of fault will be the Bookies in Vegas who handle the point spreads.
The Electoral College was a necessity in it's day when bandwidth was REALLY REALLY low. We may need it again, when votes within the United States of the Virgo Cluster are counted... but till then, abolish the Electoral College, even though it takes a Constitutional Amendment. We need to do this while we still have a Constitution to amend.
"Desire is irrelevant... I am a machine."
"A distribution of 2 Billion sticks of TNT will do more damage than a 1MT device."
;-)
I wish that I could have an array of small monitors, specifically tasked. I'd like to have a chat client maximized in a 512x384 screen, so I don't have to do anything to read "LOL". I'd like to have my Perl scripts running in their own screen, instead of having a DOS window pop up in front of me every 5 minutes.
I wanted to make a Mac SE/30 serve as a second monitor, for starters. But chickened out. Maybe even crack an iPod screen as a mini-monitor... stuck on the side of my 20" like a stickie note. I can buy a 640x480 digital picture frame... Can I make it into a monitor? Even an array of cellphone screen, tiled. I don't need 1024x768 to see the radar from the weather channel. But I do want to see the storm sneaking up on me out of the corner of my eye.
Oh, and how about a cellphone screen to output a 320x160 webcam
http://www.af2k.com/go/mspalantir.jpg
v ista/default.mspx
Source: http://www.microsoft.com/windows/products/windows
What more do you want? Flames shooting from the logo and an evil voice in a tongue which I will not utter here?
Worse than a pro-Apple buzz, is the Anti-Microsoft Buzz. As another Switcher appears at the watercooler, smiling like Smilin' Bob, the DIS-satisfaction of Microsoft will grow. What will happen is that Windows users will become increasingly frustrated with their inabilities, the road blocks, the busted drivers, the paths out into the 'Net they now FEAR to tread. Every "Cancel or Allow" will toll in an image of the Apple commercial's sunglassed security monger. The "Sad Realization" will grow.
Like one who looked into the Palantir, the emotional illness will sink in. And they will be trapped. Every mouse click will make them sicker, sink them deeper. Their happy, released Mac User associates will shine like a white wizard among the Orcs.
And every trick that Microsoft will try to rejuvenate their relationship will be transparent to them. Zune the iTune killer will make them laugh sadly. Every promise of liberation and innovation will fall flat before it is delivered. Every
The numbers will lie, like the percentage of marriages that last longer than 7 years... it belies the number of dead marriages still lingering. Microsoft will retain 90%+ of the market, but those will be wretched zombies, entombed in their own fear and loathing.
Microsoft's "WOW" will become "woe", from which they are unable to escape. And like Gandalf, betrayed by a friend and mentor, they are marooned atop a tower which promised great vision, but a broad horizon of darkness, gloom and malevolence is their only vista.
- Return of the Jedi (Fool me twice...)
- Solar Crisis
- The Core
- Deep Impact/Armageddon
- Independence Day
- Ad nauseum
I'm surprised that "The Day After Tomorrow" didn't have Dennis Quaid trying to set off a runaway reactor to counteract the temperature plunge. But that's "form following function". You have to get to climax in less than two hours. Shut up and watch the movie...However... this mentality is seeping into solving long term real-life problems. Asteroid impact, global warming, overpopulation, urban sprawl, concentration of food production (eggs) into one basket.
When a movie-goer sees these problems in their real life, they think that "there is no problem which cannot be solved by judicious application of high explosives." But it's quite the opposite.
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=152118&cid=127 64232
Has anyone considered if [Apple adopting Intel] is *** INTEL's *** way of diversifying, as an "off world colony of Planet Wintel"? In other words, is this a backup location in the seemingly increasingly likely implosion of the 'Win Wing" of WinTel? Nothing is "unthinkable", merely improbable.
Blustery pundits have used the phrase "national security risk" when referring to Windows. What if it were outlawed in government facilities? I have worked with LARGE corporations that 'forbade' IE on the computers. What if something unthinkable, as unthinkable as an asteroid strike is on Planet Earth, happened to Windows?
---
Don't put all yer x86's in one basket
------
And myself in 1998
The day will come when WinPlanet implodes. It happened to IBM. Hell, it happened to Apple. On that day, you will ask the reflection in your blank monitor the question, "Where do you want to go today?" [made with Mac logo]
I'm going to surprise you and agree with you.
So much so, that for millennia, Rabbi's had to answer the same question that Clarence Darrow (or at least Henry Fonda's portrayal) asked: "If God created the Sun on the third day, how did you know when to count the first and second day?" I'm sure a few scientists-to-be-stuck-in-a-religious-context asked... "Rabbi. if God created the Sun, Moon and stars, on the third day, what was the "light and the dark" from the first day?
I mentioned that one day to a colleague. He said "Oh, that's the division of dark matter from light." This was not a "religious person." This was a card-carrying subscriber to Skeptics Journal. I once remarked that he might be the "most skeptical person I know". He answered, "Oh, I doubt that." If a skeptic can see it, why
Before the Big Bang was hypothesized, the "Let there be light" didn't make sense. Now, it does. Science gives us a framework to envision it. My point is that until dark matter was hypothesized, the old Rabbinical interpretations didn't work. They didn't even make sense in their own context. Now, it works. Genesis presents a (terse) description and sequence of events and science confirms with observations? Isn't that how science works? That is FAR less "wishful thinking" than "the universe spontaneously popped into existence from nothing" and "It expanded in a million trillion trillionths of a second."
Here is my own paraphrase of Genesis I...
The Chaos is that bubbling pot that Hawking mentioned. Something popped out of it, it resembled photonic energy, gelled into light and Dark energy. Mass... the earth cooled, Pangaea was THE land mass. Which part of that does NOT resemble a very terse description of our current scientific understanding?
We "religious scientists" are amused that in the last decade, "Dark energy" has become en vogue, and Genesis covered it 3600 years ago. Savvy?
One of the reasons that there is even anything being discussed here is that Genesis very strongly resembles current cosmological theory and mindset. If "religious writings", which in this case are inferred the Book of Genesis of the Judeo-Christian Bible, bore absolutely no resemblance to scientific evidence, then this post would not have been made. Or necessary.
But it does!
The problem is that an 3000+ year-old book which could be subtitled "A WAY WAY Briefer History of Time" still looks like Hawkings theories is what keeps this reparteé alive, feeds the faith of the "religious scientists" and irritates the crap out of the "non-religious scientists".
Pretend this is real... Solidified hydrogen. I'm imagining a solid rocket motor. I'm imagining the "specific impulse" (thrust per unit mass) of such a system. I'm imagining the materials it would take to contain it.
I'm imagining the blast radius of the first couple test failures.
The answer is: This can travel from Sirius to Betelgeuse in the blink of an eye.
Ummm... what is 'an angel', Alex?
Ooooh, no sorry. The correct question was: "What is 'my gaze'?"
How many songs are there that are on multiple "albums"? How often do record companies put out a "Greatest Hits" compilation and add a new song just to get the fans of that band to "need" to buy it?
Now, they don't need to. The iTuner gets the new "<fiction>Van HalenRunning With The Devil f. Alanis Morrisette on vocals</fiction>" for a buck, instead of shelling out $17.99 for that and 17 reruns. That's a 94.4% drop in revenue, and DRM has nothing to do with it.
"The OS" also provides the engine for the menus, dialogs. Think of it this way... look at Word for Windows and Word for Mac. They essentially "do" the same thing. But every way in which they "look" or "behave" differently is from the OS. The Application just calls it.
As both a Mac and a Windows user ("If there's a steady paycheck in it, I'll believe anything you say."), I am amused that OSX wins. I say this because MacOS 9 had features that makes OSX feel stodgy. I could open an item halfway down a submenu with a graceful -x^3 shaped swoop. I could drag a file off the desktop into "pop up tabbed window", have it pop up and drop the file into an icon. I could double click on the titlebar, and have the window "windowshade" into the title bar. WITHOUT MOVING MY MOUSE, I could repeat and get the window back. Spring Loaded Folders, where I drag a file onto a folder, wait, the folder opens, repeat, drop and they all close. I could drag a link off the page and get the SUBSTANCE of the link. If I drag a link to a JPG, I get teh actual JPG.
Windows Vista isn't 6 years behind the UI curve, it's about 10, counting what it STILL hasn't stolen from Copland/MacOS8.
=-=-=-=-=-
User interface is everything
RJ List, a windows developer who openly admitted he couldn't design the interface.
PS: Window's Maximize works better than that voodoo that Mac do on the green ball. I'll give them that.
Insignia's SoftWindows95 on PowerMacintosh 6100/66 WITHOUT the DOS Compatibility.
I know this is a degenerate case, because I didn't really have to do anything except install it and watch Windows draw every... single... line that we later called a "button". But my kid could make a pixel car in MSPaint faster than the "freeze/reboot cycle" of mom's Windows ME.
And in MS-DOS mode, it still runs the best word processor of all time... WordPerfect 5.0 (From back in the day when a "blue screen" was a good thing.)
No menu, no mouse. We actually got things done. "We don't need no stinking menus!"
And I am as guilty as anyone. As a Mac User, I have not written ONE LINE of Mac Code. I have REAL Basic on my machine, but have I used it? No...
We as a developer community need to do one of three things:
Obviously a definition of balance with which I am not familiar.
Like balancing locking my doors against the inconvenience of my kids carrying keys to the house.
Disclaimer: MacEvangelist
I would reply "Define evil." I will try to and I will be brief.
Steve Jobs: "Perception is reality."
Bill Gates: "MY Perception is reality."
The difference between an evil Apple and an evil Microsoft is that Apple users might believe that 2 + 2 = 5, but Microsoft users are told that 2 + 2 = 5 until the just "allow it" to be.
The Vista replies, "And I'm a PC."
The $36k WAS a real job posting for